Tag Archives | Oak Trees

Yearly Essay on Buckthorn …on the fertile Corn Belt soils, all our oaks are headed for oblivion, except where ecological restoration or other intentional management protects them .Stephen Packard “Interseeding” The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook Edited by Stephen Packard and Cornelia F. Mutel Which situation is worse? Top or bottom photo? Actually, they are both […]

A DOCTRINE OF SUSTAINABILITY continued Gerould Wilhelm IV. All places on the earth, along with the people who inhabit them, are unique to all others, this singular quality embodied in the Genius Loci. Geronimo, the great Apache leader, looking back on his beloved western homeland from a prison at Pensacola, Florida noted: For […]

I Love Sedges! “And what,” you may ask, “ is a sedge?” A sedge is a grass-like plant that has solid triangular stems as opposed to the round, hollow stems of grasses. “Sedges have edges” is a popular aphorism, that cleverly describes the difference. It is not always true, but it is often enough […]

WHAT DOES OUR ECOSYSTEM PROVIDE FOR US? Captures the sun’s energy Makes oxygen Creates soil Infiltrates water Cleans water Cleans air Pollinates crops Recycles garbage Sequesters carbon Provides food and shelter Provides medications We receive all this for free. and we take it for granted. There are 129,000,000 acres of housing in the US 4 […]

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o’re the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, Ralph Waldo Emerson Winter Hike in a Kettle Moraine Woods A 20 degree Sunday afternoon and a snow-covered landscape drew me to Burnidge […]

I am so thrilled with the all the reader participation in my blog that added new information about persistent winter leaves. That makes this a truly interactive site. So, please, please, keep it coming. And I have one more participant–Jack Shouba, botanist, instructor at Morton Arboretum, and photographer sent this stunning photograph of Hop Hornbeam(Ostrya […]

Winter Scene This is not the typical picture one would see on a Christmas card or December calendar page, yet I think it is ravishing! It is more typical of the Midwest landscape than the evergreens and red berries of England and New England. I do have to explain the tree, though. For many years […]